One Life to Live Commentary

Current Two Scoops column

I didn't like it, so sue me: The worst of OLTL 2013:
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Viki and Dorian's battle began when Dorian found herself without a medical license for negligence leading to the death of Rachel Wilson. There were, of course, several people on the Hospital Board who came to the decision to rescind her license, but Dorian chose to blame Viki alone for the decision.

When Dorian learned of the existence of Tony Harris, the missing son and heir Victor Lord was seeking, she devised her plot marry Victor (and his many riches) and have Viki disinherited. She saw her opportunity when Victor suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. Conspiring with Dr. Matt McAllister to make Victor depend on her for his recovery, she wormed her way into his life as his private nurse, and soon after became his wife. The next item on her agenda was to remove the portrait of Eugenia Lord and replace it with her own over the fireplace of Llanfair. After Victor changed his will (at Dorian's coaxing of course), Tony arrived in town. Fearing they would meet and Tony would inherit Victor's money, Dorian kept Tony away with lies about his father. Just as Tony and Victor were becoming acquainted, Victor suffered a massive stroke, and being unable to alter his will, Dorian remained the beneficiary of his fortune. After a second stroke, he was left barely clinging to life and eventually died in his hospital room with Dorian by his bedside, withholding the medicine that would save his life. For the next twenty years, Llanview and we believed that she had murdered her husband.

Inheriting Victor's fortune and seeing Viki left out in the cold wasn't enough for Dorian though, as she embarked on her next scheme to ruin Viki's life by convincing Viki's then husband, Joe Riley, to keep secret his suspected brain tumor. Her plot almost worked, because Viki and Joe's marriage teetered on the brink of ruin as we watched Joe's lonely journey turn him to alcohol and a night at Dorian's home. Fortunately they worked out their problems, Joe had his benign tumor removed, and they lived happily...although, not ever after.

It was Viki's turn to get her own back when, years later, Viki and future husband Clint decided to wed at Llanfair and marched in to throw Dorian and her new husband, Herb Callison, out on their ears. It seems Victor had a clause in his Will, that if Dorian ever remarried, the house would go back to Viki.

Just a few years ago, we saw a new and interesting side of Dorian. Having been accused and convicted in the murder of Victor Lord, Dorian sat in death row, all the time hiding the fact that she knew the real killer... Viki, or rather, one of Viki's alters. Of course, Dorian being Dorian had to get back at Viki for having her accused in the first place, so she seduced Viki's youngest son, Joey. Only that backfired because Dorian fell hopelessly in love with him in the process!

The battled continued to wax and wane over the years, but when Dorian was shot in a hold up and almost died, she visited Hell where she met Carlo Hesser. Having seen the lack of wisdom of her ways, Dorian was a new person when she awoke... for awhile, anyway! We even saw Dorian and Viki get blitzed together on some kind of mysterious tea Dorian's then housekeeper/therapist conjured up. She married Mel Hayes, but despite his best efforts to help her keep to her 'new woman' frame of mind, she soon bared her fangs and claws and she and Viki returned to the ring.

Sadly, Mel was killed in a plane crash earlier this year, and Dorian, in her belief that it was Viki's fault for having him on the plane in the first place, vowed before all at his memorial service, that she would make Viki pay for his death.

I don't think, in all of Viki and Dorian's history in One Life to Live, there has ever been a storyline quite like this one. It started normally enough, Dorian made an unholy alliance in her effort to get Viki, this time with Hugo Munro, and sought Viki's unhappiness by trying to have Ben Davidson removed from her life forever. She kidnapped Viki, but in the process, found herself one of Hugo's victims when he locked her up in the coal cellar with Viki. This came to a quick end and Viki kept her silence about Dorian's role in the kidnapping - presumably out of compassion for Dorian in her grief and out of respect for Mel's memory. After numerous visits with the comical psychic, Madame Delphina, Dorian again decided to make her peace with Viki, but on the way to The Crossroads to make amends, she accidentally hit a pregnant Jessica, killing unborn baby Megan in the process. Dorian panicked, and correctly feared that Llanview, and most especially Viki would say it was a deliberate act of vengeance on Viki.

Now Viki is holding back nothing. She is seeking to take everything away from Dorian and putting an end to her power for troublemaking once and for all. Pretty well everyone in Llanview is in agreement, and someone is going all out to make it happen...or are they? Dorian may have escaped prison, but she is being punished just the same. Is someone trying to drive Dorian crazy? Could it be Viki?.. Lindsay?... Will? Jessica? Asa maybe!! Or is she succumbing to her long family history of mental illness?